A lot of people already know coffee grounds are great for enriching soil with nitrogen, but if your gardens just can’t keep up with your coffee habit there are a ton of other great ways to put those grounds to use.

Kitty Be Gone
Keep the neighborhood felines out of your garden by sprinkling a mixture of coffee grounds and orange peels around the edges of plant beds. It’s not only beneficial for you and your garden—there are lots of plants that are harmful to cats.

Ant Control
It’s that time of year: Ant season. If you have an ant problem, sprinkle coffee grounds near doorways. How does it work? The nitrogen burns the ants’ legs so they won’t walk cross it. Some people cover ant holes with grounds, but I’m a little too softhearted for that.

Sow Seeds
If you want to grow lots of carrots or radishes, you can make your seeds go further by adding in coffee grounds. Let the grounds dry and then mix them with seeds. Plant the grounds with the seeds and your plants will actually grow in thicker.

Get Shiny Hair
Coffee grounds can add shine to your hair and condition it naturally. Work the grounds into clean, wet hair and massage for a few minutes, then rinse. You may want to do this outdoors in warm weather to keep your drains from becoming clogged. (And brunettes—you’ll get the added benefit of lovely highlights.)

Eliminate Odors
Coffee absorbs scents from its environment, which makes it a fantastic natural deodorizer. Let the grounds dry, then pour them into a cup you can sit in your fridge or freezer. If you’ve been cooking with onion, garlic or other pungent foods, rub your hands in dry coffee grounds to remove smells.

Over the past 4 months, I am experiencing a great increase in real estate sales activities in the east bay and solano county, where we believe the market has reached its bottom. Many contractor/investor buyers are snatching up these distressed homes at pennies on the dollar and then turning them around after fixing them up. Of course, in order for these buyers to get the property at that price, the banks need to see CASH.

In the foreclosure market, it’s not as important for you to provide the highest bid like it is in regular market. Sellers want to get the most for their money, but banks want assurance that the buyer can pay. In a situation where a buyer with 150k cash vs. a buyer willing to buy at 180k but need financing, the bank WILL take the 150k cash.

Distressed properties are selling like hot cakes because they are priced extremely low on the bank’s books. For people that are afraid of going into the stock market right now and want a short time horizon to make money, this is the time to get in the foreclosure market, because the risk is extremely low right now given how cheap the homes are. Even if you can’t flip it, it’s still going to serve is a good rental investment earning good cashflow.

Where? Concord, Antioch, Richmond, Benicia, Walnut Creek, Pleasant Hill, Martinez. These are great places to purchase real estate if you are interested in living in the East Bay. Prices have dropped over 30%, and most of the three bedroom/2baths single family homes are less than $3-500k. A few areas are close to bart line and not too far away from the city. Lafayette and Orinda have not dropped too much, but it’s a good time to buy either a rental property or you can live in it for 2 years and rent it out after. Rent may likely cover the mortgage if you spend a little time to do some research.

Here are some data that might be useful. This information is as of September 10, 2008 brought to you by an analyst…

Current Available Listings of ALL homes

2,061

QTY (not $) of all homes sold in past 30 days

393

Months of Inventory (based on above data)

5

Average DOM for ALL homes

62

Est monthly % rate of decline (if applicable)

4%

For the month of Aug 2008, the market has fallen 3.5% in price (Aug = $633/SF vs July = $656/SF) and 19% in sales volume (Aug = 393 sold vs July = 486 sold). The days on market increased by 19% from 52 DOM (July) to 62 DOM (August). These statistics are consistent with seasonal market trends. July has traditionally been the most active time for Real Estate in SF. Of the 2061 units available, 912 are SFRs and 1149 are condos/TH/TICs. Although SFRs represent a smaller share of the market, there are more REOs than Short Sales for SFRs. Of the 912 SFRs, 43 are REOs and 84 are Short Sales. 13.9% of the SFRs are distressed listings. Of the 1149 condos/TH/TICs, 29 are REOs and 27 are Short Sales. Distressed listings only represent 4.8% of the condo/TH/TICs market. Overall as a county and city, only 8.9% of the market is represented by a distressed listing. These statistics do vary amongst the 10 sub-districts of San Francisco. District 10 is the most severely hit with 24.9% of all active listings being a REO/Short Sale (354 Listings and 86 REOs/Short Sales). District 7 is among the least hit with 0.03% distressed listings (132 listins and 4 REOs/Short Sales). As we approach the fall season, one can expect to see continued price and volume decline.

I went to a green festival last weekend and got some really good information that I wanted to pass on to people. As you know, going green also means making a strong attempt to conserve and create less junk paper. Well, we receive tons of junk mail everyday, here is how we can stop it!!!!

Go to the following places and request your name be taken off their lists:

1. Direct Mail: direct marketing association charges $1 to be taken off their list (I know, it’s ridiculous). DMA is the single largest provider of direct mail lists. For your sanity and for the world, just do it…

2. Sweepstakes (Publishers Clearinghouse is the biggest, call them at 800 645 9242and ask to be taken off.

3. Shopping Flyers: Valpack coupons: 1-800-237-6266

4. Junk Faxes: The best way to stop junk fax is to contact the sender of the fax. If they won’t stop, file a complaint to consumer information bureau at 888-225-5322 (fcc.gov/cgb/consumerfacts/unwantedfaxes.html

5. Catalogues: Contact the catalogue and tell them you want to be taken off their list. You can also write them letters. You can download a copy of a sample letter at www.stopjunkmail.org

6. Make sure when you buy stuff on line or phone that you tell them you DO NOT WANT them to sell your contact. You also tell them you do not want promotional materials…

7. Cal your service providers like insurance, banks, etc. and ask them not to send you promotional materials…

I hope this gives you a good place to start getting less junk mail and helping to save our planet…

Here is a post that I thought was important so I decided to share it. It’s actually something posted by Lisa Michelle Galley & Our Green Journey…

So I was at theAnnual Fisher Center Real Estate Conferencetoday, where the focus was “the state of real estate” from both an academic and practitioner point of view. The slant was residential, with high quality data and insights. A good bit of the perspectives highlighted themes that are spurring the rise of interest in green development.

Robert Edelstein, Co-Chair of the Fisher Center, moderated a panel this morning on the state of the housing market. The panelists were James Saccacio of RealtyTrac, Bill Sumski of Paladin Pacific and Scott Ouellette of LandCap Partners. This question from the audience caught my attention:

“Do you think energy prices are impacting real estate values?”

Here’s a composite of the panelists’ responses:

Yes, energy price risk has been already been affecting consumers in significant ways.In the current wave of foreclosures, rising interest rates were the main reason that homeowners lost their homes. Many people do not know the second reason – that the rising cost of gasoline and home energy also made the cost of homeownership too expensive, forcing people to give up their homes.

Energy prices are also forcing homeowners to reexamine the cost of their auto commutes.A panelist stated that he felt that homeowners are already starting to think that the tradeoff for a longer commute to be way less compelling.

Ken Rosen, ofRosen Consulting, provided his usual in depth economic analysis of U.S. real estate. Some of his comments also drew a thick black connector line between energy price increases and the threat to consumer and business viability. Highlights of his comments:

“Oil price increases are liketax increases. With oil prices at $122/barrel today, this is a huge tax increase on the consumer.”

“A year ago (April 2007), oil was $62/barrel, so its cost to the consumer has basically doubled in the past 12 months. At the same time in 2002, it was $20/barrel, a little over 1/6th of today’s price.”

“Official ‘core’ U.S. inflation is being reported at just below 2% currently. However, U.S. consumers, via buying so many products from abroad, are ‘importing’ a real inflation rate of 4%-4-1/2% p.a.. Part of that rate includes energy price increases. So the actual impact of energy price increases on the U.S. consumer and businesses is far greater than what is being measured and reported via the “official” data sources.”

But wait, (sadly) there’s more:

“For low income individuals, the real inflation rate is 7%-10% p.a. due to their greater exposure tofood and energy price increases combined.”

So yes, the opinions were that real estate, including its value, is being directly and indirectly affected by consumers and businesses paying more for energy. This whole discussion did not even touch upon the increased cost of energy consumption of the buildings themselves.

A central thesis behind high-performance building is that the way a building gets built and is operated can lower its risk and preserve its value. Today I heard energy price increases being called a direct tax on consumers and businesses. So to the extent real estate investors are tolerating energy inefficiency within their control, then they are also accepting a tax on their own return and forcing it on their tenants and shareholders. And this type of cost has a direct impact on a building’s ability to maintain or grow in value.

A green building may not totally eliminate the “energy tax”, but the methodology goes a long way in helping owners and tenants get smarter about operating and managing their real estate in a way to minimize negative impacts on their cash flows and property value.

Lately I have been asked by a few home owners that have a strong desire to make their homes “GREENER”, but are lost about where to start. Much of the information out there about designing and building green homes, but for people, while it’s nice to admire these beautifully designed green buildings, we are bounded by our existing homes and have only so much to work with; and while the idea of creating more natural light is great, it’s rather costly and difficult (not to mention the process it takes to get permits, etc) for most people to do that with where they live.

So I’ve decided to provide a list of simple things we can do as people who care about being green…